EU to target road death toll with revised vehicle safety rules

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - European Union car and truck safety rules
will be revised by the end of the year after pressure from
campaigners to cut the number of road deaths by forcing
manufacturers to include technologies which make vehicles safer.

A draft policy document outlining initiatives to be adopted this
year, seen by Reuters on Friday, includes a review of vehicle
safety regulation, which has been unchanged since 2009.

In 2016 25,500 people were killed in road accidents, a 2 percent
fall from the previous year and the EU wants to halve the number
of fatalities between 2010 and 2020, but said in March this
remained an "extreme challenge".

Improving the direct visibility of trucks to reduce blind spots
through camera and monitoring systems could help save hundreds of
lives a year by making it easier to spot pedestrians, cyclists
and motorcyclists, campaigners say.

Only the EU can make safety technologies mandatory for new
vehicles, prompting eight European ministers to write to the
Commission in February asking it to speed up the review process
and present a proposal "well before the end of 2017".

Safety technologies can also include intelligent speed assistance
and autonomous emergency braking systems.

"The EU has exclusive powers to set vehicle safety rules and
nowhere is an update more needed than in the truck market which,
unlike cars, has no safety labels to drive innovation. Meanwhile,
blind spots in today’s outdated truck designs are killing
hundreds of cyclists and pedestrians each year," Stef Cornelis of
campaign group Transport & Environment said.

The draft also says that the European Commission will link the
level of road charges motorists pay to the CO2 emissions of
vehicles and for the first time set an EU-wide framework for road
tolls for cars.

It says the EU executive will also mandate that time-based
charging systems be gradually phased out in favor of
distance-based systems, "beginning with heavy goods vehicles by
2023".

(Editing by Alexander Smith)

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